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Threats, Bribes and the Power of Persuasion

Fergus McNeillProfessor of Criminology & Social Work

University of GlasgowFergus.McNeill@glasgow.ac.uk

Who do people comply?(Bottoms, 2001)

Compliance Models

• Allows for interactions between mechanisms and individual differences between people, as well as changes over time

• Suggests the importance of interactions with regulator, supervisor, agency (cf. Braithwaite, 2003)

• Legal versus psychological legitimacy (cf. Tom Tyler’s work on procedural justice and police legitimacy)

Motivational postures of tax-payers (Braithwaite 2003)

Motivational Postures

Postures of deference

Postures of defiance

Commitment Capitulation Resistance Game-playing

Disengage-ment

Desistance from crime

• Why does it matter?– Not ‘what works?’, but how and why people

stop (in other words, how they come to comply)

– Less about teaching methods than learning and developmental processes in their social context

– Primary and secondary desistance

Desistance Research

• When does it matter (in practice)?– Purposes of CJS: Punish, help, (long-term)

change or (short-term) control?– Desistance is principally about long-term

change (developing normative and habitual compliance); critical to tertiary crime reduction (i.e. reducing reoffending)

– Long term change> substantive compliance> secondary desistance… and cost-effectiveness

From Bottoms and Shapland (2011: 70)

Key aspects of desistance journeys

• Zig-zag processes, not events; fluctuating motivation

• For people with entrenched criminalised identities, they usually involve re-biography; changing identities (narratives); more than learning new cognitive skills

• Prompted by life events, depending on the meaning of those events for the desister; inherently subjective, hence individualised, sensitive to difference/diversity

Key aspects of desistance journeys

• Hope is powerful and can be solicited or sustained by someone ‘believing in’the person’s potential (or prevented by someone giving up?)…

• ‘Agency’ is discovered; people learn to direct their own lives

• Social capital is required (opportunities, networks, reciprocities) as well as human capital (capacities/skills)

• Recognition matters:‘redemption’, restoration (de-labelling); finding purpose in generative activities [constructive reparation ]

Journeys and destination

• What is the positive goal or end state that criminal justice seeks to bring about? Not just minimised harms…– Restored reciprocal relationships of inter-

dependency– A better life for better citizens in a better

community, governed by a better state?• In the process of getting there together, we should

model the virtues and promote the goods we want to secure

Supporting desistance

What part for IOM?

• No single definition– A series of different constituted multi-agency initiatives which

have in common the aim of tackling (usually) high volume property offenders from high crime areas who may or may not be subject to statutory supervision (often focused on short sentence ex-prisoners)

– Make them an irresistible offer: big carrot, big stick• Three aspects (appealing to different implicit

mechanisms of compliance)– Prevent and deter (instrumental-disincentive) – Catch and convict (instrumental-disincentive)– Rehabilitate and resettle (instrumental-incentive; normative)

Lessons from half a century of rehabilitation efforts....

“First, helping people to turn their backs on a life of crime is a slow and uncertain process. It is frequently a case of “two steps forward, one step back”, because of the complexity of offenders’ lives... But second, and encouragingly, most people who become heavily involved in offending also eventually desist from crime – completely or largely – at some stage in their lives... Third, the most thorough research evaluations of treatment initiatives, when they show positive results, tend to report fairly small effects... The main implication of these studies is that programmes of work with offenders can accelerate the desistance process, but viewed in the round, they tend to have only a modest impact...”

• This is probably because the work of police, prison and probation officers are only one of many influences on offenders’ lives. Hence, there are several useful tools in the rehabilitation armoury – but no ‘silver bullets’. Fourth, rehabilitation programmes can easily become derailed, especially when they involve complex partnerships between several different agencies; the successful implementation of fresh and apparently promising approaches is a real challenge.” (Academic Reference Group’s Foreword to ‘An evaluation of the Diamond Initiative: year two findings’, emphases added)

Lessons from half a century of rehabilitation efforts....

Outcomes, outcomes, outcomes....

• Reoffending in experimental group similar to control group. Why?

• Implementation problems (undue haste)?– Deployment of resources; Working tensions between partners

• Timescales for measuring impact too short?– Entrenched behaviours take time to shift (cf. smoking cessation)

• Methodological flaws?– Problems with control group match?; Project had an impact on rates of

reconviction in experimental group?• Positive findings

– A voluntary service to prolific offenders (mean = 11 convictions), but 60% take up, and higher take-up by those most in need/at risk

Practical implications

“Perhaps the most important is that helping people to desist from crime involves a long-term commitment; if the police, probation service and their partners - or indeed the government - expect a return on their investment in the space of a year or less, they will very likely be disappointed. Second, the study has certainly demonstrated the feasibility of involving police officers in rehabilitative work with offenders; and we would expect the long term effects of joint working to be beneficial both for the police and for their partners in the probation service and elsewhere. Third, there is an obvious value in information-sharing across custody and community settings, yet also some serious challenges in making this happen as smoothly as it should”.

(Academic Reference Group’s Foreword to ‘An evaluation of the Diamond Initiative: year two findings’, emphases added)

Some big questions

• To what extent should the Police be involved in working to ‘rehabilitate & resettle’ (and to what extent should probation and third sector be involved in C&C, P&D)?

• What are the implicit models of compliance that underpin IOM work, and what evidence exists to support them?

• Does IOM build legitimacy (with offenders and with the public) or threaten it?

• How does IOM fit with the wider project of rehabilitation?

Judicial Rehabilitation

(Formal recognition of rehabilitation/

desistance?)

Social Rehabilitation

(Re-insertion, reintegration, de-

labelling... Informal recognition? Trading Up?)

Moral Rehabilitation

(Provision of evidence of developing good

character – Making Good/Paying Back?)

Psychological Rehabilitation

(the development of personality/capacity?)

Four strands, woven together

Judicial

Moral

Social

Personal

Conclusions

• Desistance as a personal project• Desistance as a social process• Desistance as a political process

• For more information, contact:– Fergus.McNeill@glasgow.ac.uk

• Follow the Desistance Knowledge Exchange blog:– http://blogs.iriss.org.uk/discoveringdes

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